Politics

Battle For Rep. Hastert's Seat Getting Ugly

CHICAGO (CBS) ― There is a rare special election this Saturday to fill the remaining term of former Congressman Dennis Hastert.

The 14th District covers most of Kane County and stretches west almost to the Mississippi River.

As CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, regardless of the outcome, the candidates will square off a second time in November.

Democrat Bill Foster, a nuclear physicist and entrepreneur, is locked in a tight race against perennial candidate Republican Jim Oberweis, the milk and ice cream titan. This week the race took a nasty turn.

"That is the most despicable negative false campaigning," Oberweis said.

Meanwhile, Foster said, "Jim Oberweis brought his mudslinging and dirt from the Republican primary."

Oberweis says he's been smeared as anti-immigrant in an anonymous flyer hitting the many Latino households in the 14th Congressional District.

"That makes me mad," Oberweis said. "This is just wrong. I have never had a position or problem with immigration."

He filed suit Thursday against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee over what he says are false claims in an advertisement that Oberweis Dairy hired undocumented immigrants four years ago.

And Foster is piggybacking a Chicago Tribune attack that Oberweis used actors instead of real people in a mailer.

"Oberweis is using fake numbers and fake people to smear me in the mail," Foster said.

"Three or four days before the end of the campaign to go out and spend time trying to find people to fit those different categories was a lot more difficult than just finding actors," Oberweis countered.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is lending his considerable weight to Foster's $500,000 bombardment of TV ads.

(CBS 2, the Naperville Sun and the Aurora Beacon-News are news partners covering stories in the western suburbs. Send story tips to tips@cbs2chicago.com. (© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)